THE LAST LEAF by O.Henry

THE LAST LEAF

by O.Henry

In November a cold, unseen stranger whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Mr. Pneumonia wasn’t what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.

“She has one chance in – let us say, ten,” said the doctor to Sue. “And that chance is for her to want to live. Your little lady has made up her mind that she’s not going to get well.”

After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy’s room. Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes.  Sue arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story.

Johnsy’s eyes were open wide. she was looking out of the window and counting – counting backward.

“Twelve,” she said, and a little later “eleven”; and then “ten”; and “nine”; and then “eight” and “seven” almost together.

Sue looked solicitously out of the window. There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.

“What is it, dear? Tell you Sudie.”

“Six,” said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. “They are falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. There goes another one. There are only five left now.”

“Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I’ve known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you?”

“Oh, I never heard of such nonsense,” complained Sue, with a magnificent scorn… “Johnsy, dear. Will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not to look out of the window until I’m done working? I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner.”

Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. Behrman was a failure in art. He had been about to paint a masterpiece, but he had never yet begun it. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece.

Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. She told him of Johnsy’s fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt for such idiotic imagination.

… When Sue awoke from an hour’s sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes starting at the drawn green shade.

“Pull it up; I want to see,” she ordered, in a whisper.

But lo! After the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine.

“It is the last one. I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall today and I shall die at the same time,” said Johnsy. The loneliest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready on its mysterious, far journey.

The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down on the low Dutch eaves.

When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.  The ivy leaf was still there. Johnsy lay for a long time looking for it.

“I’ve been a bad girl, Sudie”, she said. “Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It’s a sin to want to die.”

“Even chances,” said the doctor in the afternoon, taking Sue’s thin shaking hand in his. “With good nursing you’ll win. And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There’s no hope for him.”

…..The next afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay. “I have something to tell you, little mouse,” she said. “Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn’t have imagined where he was on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and some scattered brushes, and – look out of the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. It’s Behrman’s masterpiece – he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.”

Listen to the audio of the storyto practise your pronunciation. 
http://listentogenius.com/recordings/TheLastLeaf.mp3

Task 1. Read the text and translate it.

          Task 2. Find English equivalents of the following words and phrases.

1. умереть от воспаления легких

2. преследовать 

3. благородный, галантный

4. дурень, простофиля

5. шедевр, произведение искусства

6. японская салфетка

7. тихонько войти

8. пульсация, рябь

9. озабоченно

10. веточка  плюща

11. рушившийся 

12. чепуха, ерунда

13.  величественная ухмылка 

14. золотоискатель-отшельник

15. в хлам, запоем

16. хрупкий

17. соблазн 

18. серьезный, критический, острый

19. швейцар

20. фонарь

21. разбросанные
22. ледяные пальцы
23. дурень, тупица
24. холодные как лёд
25. шедевр

          Task 3. Match the synonyms 

1. scorn                           k) weep
2. duffer                          j) disdain
3. nonsense                     h) lamp
4. hermit                         g) mockery
5. fragile                         f) fool
6. stalke about               e) bosh
7. cry                               d) loner
8. contempt                     c) brittle
9. lantern                        b) porter
10. janitor                      a) roam around

          Task 4. Point out the main idea and the conflicts raised in O. Henry's story.
          
          Task 5. Write 5 questions to the text in your exercise-books.

Task 6. Watch this presentation about O. Henry's biography

Task 6. Watch this film.